"Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God's gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences." (Freeman Dyson)

Latest News Items

21st FIPA Meeting: April 2-6, London -- The 21st meeting of the FIPA agents standards group will be held in London, UK from 2-6 April 2001 in London, hosted by Imperial College. The quarterly FIPA meetings are free and open to FIPA members and interested nonmembers who are willing to actively contribute to the FIPA process. More information on how to participate in FIPA can be found at http://fipa.org/. (2/25)

W3C Semantic Web Activity -- The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has "officially" announced their Semantic Web activity. The Semantic Web is "the idea of having data on the web defined and linked in a way that it can be used by machines not just for display purposes, but for automation, integration and reuse of data across various applications." (2/25)

Ontologies in Agent Systems -- The Workshop on Ontologies in Agent Systems will be held in Montreal on 29 May 2001 in conjunction with the 5th International Conference on Autonomous Agents. OAS2001 will provide a forum for the discussion and comparison of different approaches to the representation of ontologies for agent systems, the practical considerations of designing applications using these techniques and the infrastructural support required for their effective use. It will also address the implications of the current diversity of ontology representation languages and the degree to which standardization can or should be achieved. Submissions are due on March 16, 2001. (1/21)

XSLT Extensions Revisited -- The first W3C Working Draft of XSLT 1.1 attempts to solve several problems with XSLT 1.0 and add new features that are in demand, but has proved to be controversial in several areas. Leigh Dodds, in an article on XML.com, summaries the debate. (elpub). (2/25)

Software agents that evolve language -- A FEED magazine article on software agents that evolve communication to help in Predator-Prey pursuit. (2/23)

Machine head -- A New Scientist:article on what happens when machines out perform their creators. (2/23)

Beyond the Bar Code -- An article from Technology review on tagging objects with radio beacons. "Within a few years, unobtrusive tags on retail products will send radio signals to their manufacturers, collecting a wealth of information about consumer habits—and also raising privacy concerns." (2/23)

Deconstructing Harry Connick Jr. -- A Wired article on the problem of recommender systems for music, and several of the new systems which are under development. (2/23)

Incredible Shrinking Robot, Self-Contained and Untethered -- A NYT article on a Sandia National Laboratories team that has created what the researchers believe is the world's smallest untethered robot. (2/23)

Software robots roam the Net, for better and for worse -- This CNN article describes Software bots, including Electric Elves agents, and their pros and cons. (2/23)

Creating the Soul of a Robotic Dog -- A NYT article on the process of developing Tiger's i-cybie, a robotic dog that will sell for $200. (2/4)

Latest Directory Additions

Agents for handheld, mobile and embedded devices -- Papers are sought for a special track of the ATAL-2001 workshop on the use of agent technology for handheld, mobile or embedded devices. The ATAL workshop will be held in Seattle on August 1-3, 2001. and aims to bring together researchers interested in the agent-level, micro aspects of agent technology. Specifically, ATAL-2000 will address issues such as theories of rational agency, software architectures for intelligent agents, methodologies and programming languages for realizing agents, and software tools for applying and evaluating agent systems. Papers that consider macro-level, societal issues of agent-based systems are welcome if they explicitly relate to the workshop themes. Papers are due April 6, 2001. (2/25)

FIPA RFI for a standard for Agent behavior policies -- FIPA Policies and Domains, Request For Information (RFI) -- Developers and users of multi-agent systems often wish to place strong constraints on the behavior of agents within agent environments. This especially means being able to apply and enforce these constraints and policies across distributed agents and systems. FIPA has issued an RFI to obtain information, which will establish a specification document in the area of policies and domains. The document will form a logical extension to the FIPA Abstract Architecture specification (2/25)

Repository of FIPA agent Specifications -- The FIPA specifications for agents standards are now available in both html and pdf. (2/25)

FIPA agent standards mailing lists -- Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) maintains a set of mailing lists, most of which are open to anyone. Mailing lists include those devoted to general discussion, agent architectures, agents in wireless environments, the agentCities application testbed, and manufacturing applications. (2/25)

W3C Semantic Web Activity -- The Semantic Web is a vision: the idea of having data on the web defined and linked in a way that it can be used by machines not just for display purposes, but for automation, integration and reuse of data across various applications. The Semantic Web Activity is a successor to the W3C Metadata Activity. (2/25)

EasyAsk: Natural Language Searching -- EasyAsk Inc. envisions the day when people will ask for the precise information they want (in a wired or wireless environment) and immediately find it, regardless of where it resides. EasyAsk Inc., launched in 1999, evolved from Linguistic Technology Corporation‚ a company started by Dr. Larry Harris in 1994. (2/25)

dexribe -- Dexribe is "a technology that mimics the human knowledge system using a structured information approach. dexribe is a domain-independent and application-independent technology that provides a natural, dynamic, extensible and adaptable system for gathering, storing, organizing and sharing knowledge". Dexribe builds on concepts from XML technologies, Topic maps, RDF, Groves, human memory models, human interactions, knowledge technologies and related areas. (2/25)

Security of mobile multi-agent systems -- The First International Workshop on SECURITY OF MOBILE MULTIAGENT SYSTEMS (SEMAS-2001) will be held at the Fifth International Conference on Autonomous Agents (Agents 2001) in Montreal, Canada May 29th 2001 (2/25)

Intelligent Virtual Agents '01 -- he Third Workshop on Intelligent Virtual Agents 2001 (IVA2001), is to be held in Madrid on 10-11th September 2001. This workshop will deal with autonomous embodied agents in an interactive graphical environment, usually 3D, which draw on AI and ALife technology so as to interact intelligently with its environment and with human users. (2/24)

Concern About New Web Monitors and cybersleuthing -- A Wired News article which discusses the increasing sophistication of data-extraction technology offered by a host of Web intelligence agencies. This is being used by corporate PR to develop the power to extinguish a rumor as soon as it's born. (2/24)

Beyond Human : New World of Cyborgs and Androids -- A new book by science fiction writer and physics professor Gregory Benford (2/24)

News in Brain and Behavioral Sciences -- NiBBS is a mailing list of news and information about brain and behavioral science. (2/24)

IEEE Task Force on Cluster Computing -- The TFCC is an international forum promoting cluster computing research and education. It participates in helping to set up and promote technical standards in this area. The Task Force is concerned with issues related to the design, analysis, development and implementation of cluster-based systems. Of particular interest are: cluster hardware technologies, distributed environments, application tools and utilities, as well as the development and optimization of cluster-based applications. (2/24)

Grid Forum -- The Global Grid Forum (Global GF) is a community-initiated forum of individual researchers and practitioners working on distributed computing, or "grid" technologies. Global GF focuses on the promotion and development of Grid technologies and applications via the development and documentation of "best practices," implementation guidelines, and standards with an emphasis on rough consensus and running code. (2/24)

jini-activity@gridform.org -- A Jini Working Group has been established under the under the Global Grid Forum. It's aim is to discuss the development of scalable Jini-based solutions to gird and agent-based computing. (2/24)

JiVE: JAFMAS integrated Visual Environment -- A MS Thesis by Alan Galan from the University of Cincinnati. (2/23)

Jive: JAFMAS integrated Visual Environment -- Jive (JAFMAS integrated Visual Environment) is a tool for the design and development of multi-agent systems. Jive allows a designer to draw a multi-agent system graphically (including communications and behavior), specify the necessary properties, check the design for correctness, and deploy their application either directly in the JAFMAS framework or in a framework of their own choosing. (2/23)

PhD: AVALANCHE - an agent-based decentralized coordination ... (in German) -- The multiagent system AVALANCHE is a prototypical implementation of a decentralized market coordination mechanism, and shows its efficiency by means of coordination a supply chain. The coordination result on the basic marketplaces and along the whole supply chain follows from a 'spontaneous order' of supply and demand in a Hayekian realization of neo-austrian economics, where no central control is existent. (2/23)

Artificial Mind in JavaScript for Internet Explorer 4.01+ -- The Artificial Mind in JavaScript for Internet Explorer 4.01+ is the AI implementation of a linguistic theory of mind, with the special characteristic that the AI runs within your MSIE browser. Free, public-domain, easily modifiable source code. (2/23)

Quantum Leap Innovations -- Quantum Leap Innovations is a company founded by University of Delaware graduates which "builds intelligent software solutions for users in industry and government." They focus on "making the software systems we develop and design act more like personal, intelligent advisors that attempt to understand the desires and goals of each individual user, and provide him or her with tailored, guided advice." (2/23)

Evo Artificial Life Framework -- Evo, developed by the Omicron Group, is a software framework that allows researchers to study complex systems of independent agents interacting with one another and with their Simulation System developed at the Santa Fe Institute and maintained at the Swarm Development Group. Evo was developed solely with the use of open-source tools and is released as freeware under the terms of the GNU GPL. (2/4)

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